GCB
Background (based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCB_(TV_series))
Based on “Good
Christian Bitches” by Kim Gatlin
Ran March 4th-May
6th 2012
Type: Multi-camera
43-minute “comedy drama” (reality: sitcom)
EP: Darren Star (of
Sex and the City fame)
Starring: Leslie Bibb,
Kristin Chenoweth, Annie Potts, Miriam Schor, Jennifer Aspen, Marisol Nichols
Based on 22 Critic reviews, Metacritic gave GCB a 55. (http://www.metacritic.com/tv/gcb/critic-reviews) These were mainly due to unfavorable comparisons to Desperate Housewives (based on timeslot) and Revenge (loosely for the premise) as well as showing off negative stereotypes of Christians and Texans.
The 6.7 Metacritic User score was based on 38 ratings citing similar issues. (http://www.metacritic.com/tv/gcb/user-reviews)
It should be noted that the reviews cited on Metacritic were nearly all done before more than two episodes had aired in the series or had been available.
THOUGHTS PRE-REWATCH:
I love this show. It’s light, fun, and exciting, and reminds me
constantly of the idea of Designing Women (rather than Desperate Housewives,
which I never watched and apparently was a lead-in for this). Amanda reminds me strongly of Brooke from
Ryan Murphy’s show “Popular”—another connection that I love. What if Brooke never dealt with the grounding
elements of Popular? She would have been
the mean girl Amanda was through the rest of her time in Dallas and might have
been in a similar situation. As a
result, this show feeds on two levels of nostalgia—one for Popular, which I
watched weekly as a young teen, and one for Designing Women, which I started
watching on Lifetime and grew to love the stereotypes it portrayed.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that
Designing Women was just as stereotypical as GCB is and it’s funny to me that
people write off one for being crazy and the other gets nostalgic praise.
I am probably the ideal audience
that the production staff was going for—gay male, mid-to-late 20s (so as to
recall both Designing Women and Popular), who loves crazy sitcoms about strong Southern
women and might be just old enough to want to be done with the drama of high
school. And that’s fine. I’m also probably the same for many other
shows I loved that have gotten cancelled based on low ratings: Don’t Trust the
B— in Apartment 23, Happy Endings, That’s My Bush…. The Neighbors…
THOUGHTS AFTER THE REWATCH, BASED ON NOTES:
Anyone who tells you this is a
soap opera or a comic drama completely misunderstands this show. GCB is a semi-serialized sitcom, along the
lines of Happy Endings, Don’t Trust the B—in Apt 23, Friends, SOAP, Coupling,
Whitney… It’s just in a full-hour format.
There are only a handful of times when the show truly feels like it’s
dragging, but it’s never enough to make me feel like this would have worked for
a half-hour series.
The pilot of GCB does what a
pilot needs to do at the most basic level: it sets up the premise of the show
and begins to introduce the characters.
It is unfortunate that many of the reviews (especially the negative
ones) focused mainly on the pilot and possibly one or two more episodes,
because they ignored the opportunity for the writers to grow the
characters.
The main “antagonistic” group of
Carlene, Cricket, and Sharon (Heather very seldom actually figures into that
group) starts off as caricatures to make Amanda’s plight more relatable. Carlene is the holier-than-thou hypocritical oversexed
“Kitten” who can’t help but judge others and spout bible verses. Cricket is a hardworking bitch whose husband
is getting something on the side and shows no physical interest in her… because
she’s a woman. And Sharon is a former
beauty queen who is up a bunch of sizes because she tends to try to suffocate
her troubles with food.
Carlene and Cricket hold grudges
against Amanda because of her actual slights from high school (relentlessly
teasing Carlene and kicking her off the cheerleading team and spreading a rumor
that Cricket had herpes), while Sharon is an easily-manipulated woman who genuinely
feels uncomfortable because her husband has shown attraction towards Amanda,
though Amanda isn’t an actual threat to her marriage.
What we learn throughout the
ten-episode season is that these women have a lot more to themselves, their
marriages have a much better foundation than the pilot implies, and IFL* the
series because of what it does to the characters. Plus I love camp, and what better way to do
it than in an hour-long sitcom?
Carlene is a very strong woman
who throws herself into her sexual relationship with her husband and her faith,
but she realizes that her husband Ripp can sometimes ignore her wishes and ideas
and eventually starts to rebel a bit.
She so identifies herself as a Christian, she explains that…
“It’s what I am, don’t you get
it? What I believe wakes me up in the
morning and gets me through the day. It’s
how my soul breathes. It’s my source of
joy. It’s what gets me through my
pain! I love my God. He has given me all my blessings… and I just wanted
to make him happy.”
Some of Carlene’s actions are
genuinely mean-spirited, but there are a lot of things for which she turns to
her faith and she knows it inside out.
She even notes in the finale for Pastor Tudor that “Nobody understands
Revelations. Never have, never will.”
Cricket and her husband Blake see
themselves as being part of a business—they are excellent actual business partners
(as shown by the multinational success of the Caruth-Reilly brand) who have
raised a smart daughter. While sex isn’t
really part of their relationship (due primarily to Blake being gay), Cricket
and Blake are incredibly close friends and the looks of love between the
characters are honestly the most loving glances I notice in the series. Cricket is very business-minded because that
seems to be the best way for her to try to gain the affections of her father,
Daddybo, who has always been upset that he didn’t have a son instead. It took me writing this paragraph to realize
that the reason that she can’t connect so closely with the two main men in her
life is purely because she doesn’t have a penis.
Sharon isn’t smart. She’s not savvy. But she can cook like no other and when she
sets her mind to doing something she goes all in. She is unrivaled in speed when it comes to
skinning a rabbit, she makes lots of food, and with determination she conquers
the “Stockholm ‘n Stuff” shelving unit at the beginning of a character arc that
brings her to leading one of the best small wellness corporations in Texas
after she starts trying to sell her Losing It With Jesus diet plan to try to
keep her family afloat.
In addition to the premise of
putting Amanda against the group of “Good Christian Bitches,” nearly every
episode parallels some kind of difficulty faced by Amanda with a difficulty
faced by her mother (learning to accept the advances of a man, going through
difficult parenting times, or even simply going back to a power-mad woman she
was almost two decades earlier). What’s weird
is that Amanda is generally the character with the least growth, and much of the
growth she has (as explained later in the season) is based on her wanting to
prove herself to be strong enough to get by without a man to make sure her
daughter considers that to be an option.
In addition to Amanda’s limited
characterization, the men associated with the group have limited
characterization and growth, but that’s what a second season would have been
for. At least, I hope that Will would
have gotten half the development of Laura.
FINAL CONCLUSION:
I really do love this series, and although there are many flaws and unanswered questions with it (how do all the gay men in Dallas know to flirt with Blake and why do they do it so openly? Based on stereotypes about California, how is Amanda so bad at "avoiding the buffet of death" when she spent 18 years there? Whatever happened to Amanda's father?), I really think it's worth a shot. Just don't go in expecting a comic drama--expect a long sitcom.
*IFL is something that will pop up periodically thoughout, as
I’ve started using it in my notes. It’s
my less offensive way of saying I FUCKING LOVE something.
